A Rather Charming Invitation

by C. A. Belmond

  “Okay, since I don’t even know what a poppet is,” I said meekly.

  “Let’s please move on. What next?” he asked, shuffling through my papers.

  “You already said you could get your mum to help with musicians. Can you handle the music?” I asked. “I’d like classical for the ceremony, and anything you want for the reception.”

  “Sure,” he said. “What else?”

  “The venue should be next, because that could affect the total number of guests,” I said. “We have to decide which country to have the wedding in. Frankly, I know this is ungrateful of me, but I don’t really want to be married in that château. It doesn’t feel like you and me. Neither does some brunch at an English country inn that means nothing to us. But it will be hard to get a booking anywhere now. Every place I talk to keeps insisting they can’t even do this year, let alone September.”

  “Pick the country first,” Jeremy suggested.

  “I could do either England or France, I love them both. Just so long as the place where we say, ‘I do’ feels like a place where we both belong,” I explained.

  Jeremy stood up and reached in his pocket for a coin. “Okay,” he said briskly. “Heads, we have the wedding in France. Tails, England.” He pitched the coin into the air. It went straight up, then came down with a purposeful landing, Ping! Right on one of the cars of the toy train bleu.

  “There you have it!” Jeremy declared. “It’s heads for France.” And then, as I gazed down at the little toy train, I had a perfect Eureka! moment. I jumped up and started waltzing Jeremy around the room.

  “What gives?” he demanded.

  “Thanks to you,” I cried, “I have just solved everything!”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  My brilliant idea was this: Since we had to deal with the press’ interest in our wedding anyway, why not make the “public” part of the day be a benefit occasion for my charity group? Inspired by Venetia’s 1930s wedding, I thought we might charter a couple of private railroad cars, decorate them like elegant vintage ones, and give our English and American guests a luxurious reward for coming to France for the wedding. Hopefully this would offset the inconvenience of travel.

  “The press and the English guests can start out at St. Pancras station in London,” I explained to Jeremy. “They’ll switch in Paris, to board our spiffed-up wedding cars, along with our French and American guests; then everybody takes off, down the train bleu path to the Riviera, where they pick up Honorine’s family at the Cannes station. Our guests will be wined and dined all the way, maybe with some vintage music from that time period; and we’d better throw in some Beatles for our parents.

  “Anyway, the final destination will be the villa in Antibes, where we can be married in a more private ceremony, before the tapestry. The villa feels just right for the exchange of vows and the reception; it’s like Great-Aunt Penelope will watch over us there. Then, we go off on the yacht for a secluded honeymoon. The guests go back home by train, and voilà! It’s done.”

  I brandished my pen. Jeremy grinned. “You are sounding more French by the minute,” he said approvingly. “Could it be that you’re turning into one of those chic Gallic females?”

  “Ooh, I like the sound of that!” I said, beaming.

  Jeremy raised a few practical concerns, but overall he liked the idea. “But,” he questioned, “how does that help your charity?”

  “Well,” I said, bursting with enthusiasm, “instead of buying us presents, the guests can simply fill out a box on the invitation’s RSVP card, to either make a donation to the charity—which will get them a ‘train ticket’ to the wedding—or, for those guests who still prefer to buy ‘things’ instead of making a donation, I’ll provide a registry of decorative items we’ll want for furnishing the railcars: old-fashioned lamps, and dining-car dishware, cutlery, monogrammed napkins, stuff like that. In place of a bridal registry, see? After the wedding, the entire collection of these ‘gifts’ can be donated to my Women4Water charity, so that they can use it again for future fund-raising parties, dinners and galas; or they could even auction ’em off if they want.

  “And since the press wants to cover the wedding anyway, at least all the publicity will benefit the charity. It will be one big celebration, and at the end of it, you and I will sail away on Penelope’s Dream and leave the world behind.”

  Jeremy grinned, “You know,” he said, “I think this idea is just crazy enough to be worth a shot.”

  “Let’s go try it out on Honorine,” I said, hearing her footsteps as she came in. “If it flies with her, we might have a chance at getting it past Leonora.”

  We trotted over to Honorine’s reception room, and told her the whole story. She had been out shopping with her friend, but now she put down her packages and listened raptly, with a very serious and proper attitude, her face never betraying her thoughts until we reached the end.

  Then she announced philosophically, “C’est idéal. It will be fun, and how many weddings can you say that about?”

  “Hooray!” I cried. “This wedding finally has an engine!”

  In the next couple of days, the plan really picked up steam. Honorine eagerly announced that, through family connections, she was able to get in touch with a bigwig at the French rail company, who enthusiastically saw an opportunity to publicize the advantages of rail travel over air travel. My charity gals were ecstatic, and offered to help coordinate the “gift” registry for me.

  So I telephoned Venetia for the details of the luxury items of those old railroad cars. She was flattered to be one of my consultants, and she gave Honorine lots of instructions to pass on to Erik and Tim, who were delighted with the concept. You might say that everyone got “on board” . . . except Grandmother Margery. Her comments brought it all to a screeching halt.

  “Surely you are joking,” she said, not really comprehending the idea, and not particularly wanting to. “Ask my friends to take a train journey to France? Why on earth should they do that?”

  “You have to understand,” Jeremy told me after that deflating phone conversation, “she’s accustomed to having her orders obeyed by one and all. It’s what she lives for.”

  But even this couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm. Figuring that finesse and psychology were called for here, I said cunningly, “Why not invite her to visit us at the villa in Antibes, to see for herself that it’s a totally appropriate venue for her guests? We’ll tell her we won’t make a move without her input. That way she can still feel like she has the final word.”

  “And if she says no?” Jeremy inquired. “What’s our Plan B?”

  “We tie her up and gag her, chuck her in the luggage compartment, and force her to come,” I said.

  “Ah,” Jeremy replied. “I knew you’d think of everything.”

  “We’ll cross that viaduct when we get there,” I said stoically.

  He returned to the phone, called her back and relayed this new suggestion. At first I couldn’t tell what she was saying on her end of the conversation, because Jeremy did some long listening. But finally he said, “Right. I’ll call you back.” He hung up, then announced, “She bought it.”

  Apparently the idea of being fussed over and allowed to conduct an “inspection” was just too appealing to Grandmother Margery to refuse. So, for once I had played my cards right. Honorine, who knew a thing or two about protocol, suggested that we prepare the villa for this inspection by sprucing up the place, including the garden, which we’d have to do for the wedding anyway.

  “Let’s get it done now,” Honorine said pragmatically. “We could even hang the tapestry in the villa for her to see. I’ll tell my mother it’s like a dress rehearsal.”

  Leonora was actually very happy to receive this news, because when she hadn’t heard back from me, she’d assumed that we’d decided to forsake France for an English wedding. She said that she and Philippe and David would be happy to be on hand at the villa, to help us greet and smooth the way for Margery, and they could sup
ervise the proper hanging of the tapestry. Aunt Sheila’s beau arranged to transport the lovely clock he’d given us to the villa, so it could be set up in the drawing room to chime like wedding bells after we took our vows.

  But of all the hurdles we’d jumped, I counted this one the biggest: even Great-Aunt Dorothy complied, agreeing to let Rollo use her antique champagne glasses for the reception. “I told her that if she didn’t contribute, we would look the fools, and the press would say our side of the family were the poor relations,” Rollo explained. “Blackmail, plain and simple, my dear girl.”

  So all systems were go. “Okay, troops!” Erik said. “Let’s high-tail it to the villa, and dress this set!”

  And a major production it was. Celeste, the housekeeper, likened it to an invasion of an army. But Erik and Tim soon made fast friends with her, and she pulled in some of her relatives to do garden work, more cleaning, minor carpentry, even sewing. We all swarmed around like busy bees, and soon there was a rather festive atmosphere, since, no matter how much work there was to do, we could always plunk ourselves in the pool at the end of a dusty workday.

  Summer on the Riviera was in full swing now, and the famed flower markets and food stalls in Antibes and Nice were in their glory, just bursting with incredibly wonderful earthly delights for our suppers—plump juicy tomatoes, purple and white eggplant, green and yellow zucchini, and fruit so succulent and flavorful that they perfumed the entire house—white peaches, red cherries, giant red and green grapes, sweet yellow pears, and bunches of tiny delicate purple champagne grapes that were so perfect with a plate of cheese.

  And flowers, flowers everywhere, in each room, filling the house with fragrance. We planted a few more blossoming shrubs, and Leonora’s gardener gave us some potted citrus trees from their greenhouse, to place on the patio. Celeste threw herself into sprucing up the kitchen garden at the side of the house, and now it was fragrant with basil, oregano, thyme, marjoram, parsley, and bay. Even the bees were giddy with delight. The sun shone hot and bright, the air was alive with birdsong, and the night breezes were a sigh of satisfaction, punctuated by the occasional hoot of an owl.

  There was never a moment when I didn’t silently bless Great-Aunt Penelope for bestowing this lovely villa on us. Moving from room to room, I once again felt her presence, as if she couldn’t resist just another good party. One day in particular, after Erik had a piano delivered, he sat down to test it out, and played a couple of 1930s tunes he knew; and when I heard the ghostly music wafting through the house, out the windows, past fluttering curtains, I was certain that we had Aunt Pen’s blessings. I could almost hear her say, “Well done, ducky!”

  So, I could be forgiven for feeling optimistic, and, as inspection day dawned, I was buoyed up with enough confidence to face down anybody, even Grandmother Margery. Honorine, however, was as pale and nervous as if she’d been cramming for a final exam. Tim moaned that his jitters were far, far worse than an opening night when he’d “trod the boards” in his early and ill-fated attempts to be an actor.

  I even caught Aunt Sheila standing outside in the driveway, covertly smoking a cigarette; and the gardener’s dog hiding in the wine cellar, where I found him peering out anxiously from under a rack of bottles. Rollo helped move chairs, and he fussed with the glasses on the buffet table, mopping his brow every now and then, as if this were the most physical labor he’d done in his entire life.

  By noon, David, Oncle Philippe, Tante Leonora and Honorine finished the last details of hanging the tapestry in the drawing room. Now they stepped outside on the patio, to catch their breath. That left me alone with the tapestry in the cool shady room. Occasionally, the wind would stir the trees outside, and the changing light caused some of the silver and gold threads to glint and gleam. Today, the images in the tapestry seemed benign, calm and balanced; and the slumbering couple’s dreams were just that—life’s illusions, a set of passing vignettes that came and went like the wind’s sighs across the flower fields. There was something sweet and consoling and yet exhilarating about it, as if the tapestry was telling me to move ahead fearlessly into this new realm.

  Erik and Guy came out of the dining room now, and lingered on the threshold of the drawing room as Guy held out his pocket watch, waiting for the mantel clock to strike the half- hour. Ting-tong-tong-Ting, Tong-ting-ting-Tong!

  “Beautiful,” Erik said approvingly, smiling at me. “When was it made?”

  “Oh, I can tell you the exact year,” Guy replied. “See, right here in the chronogram? It says it was made in 1725.”

  I heard a car coming up the gravel driveway. Everyone else heard it, too, and there was a sudden rush as people assembled expectantly in the circular foyer. I went outside, pausing on the front stoop, feeling the heady sunshine of the day. The fountain sparkled invitingly.

  Uncle Giles was driving a rented Bentley, but when it stopped, another man got out of the back seat and hurried around the car to open the front passenger door for Grandmother Margery. She emerged, in a pink and white chiffon frock, with a long pink silk scarf around her neck, resplendent and queenly, as her little narrow ankles and feet in their pink high-heeled sandals touched down delicately and tentatively, like a flamingo.

  “Lovely place!” Giles called out to us, glancing appreciatively at the villa. He looked like one of those pale Englishmen who spends so much time in offices that they emerge into sunny climes blinking, like groundhogs. He ambled toward us now, and introduced the other man in their entourage as Hilary, Margery’s personal decorator—and definitely someone she hadn’t told us about. Hilary wore pale green linen trousers, a green-and-white striped shirt, and bone-colored loafers with no socks. He had longish blond hair, parted in the center and pulled into a short ponytail, and wire-rimmed spectacles.

  “Hmmm,” Hilary murmured noncommittally, gazing about appraisingly.

  I saw Margery glance alertly at him, and she, too, said, “Hmmm,” and in that moment it was clear that, although nothing had been decided yet, Hilary would hold more sway over her opinion than anyone else. The group came inside, chattering excitedly and animatedly, but I had a moment of panic as Jeremy introduced Hilary to Erik. I feared they were bound to clash, since Erik and Tim had worked like dogs to do a spectacular job of decorating the villa. And indeed, Hilary and Erik now warily circled each other, like two extremely opinionated tigers.

  Meanwhile, Tante Leonora and Oncle Philippe had been standing calmly in the foyer, waiting to greet our English guests. I watched Leonora quickly size up Margery; I guess I knew my French relative well enough by now to see that she diplomatically decided, in that instant, not to immediately go head-to-head with Jeremy’s grandmother. Margery wore her queen-on-the-reception-line smile. It was as if both matriarchs were determined not to be the first one who lost her cool. This, at least, was hopeful.

  Aunt Sheila and Guy had been loyally on hand all day, but at the first sight of Margery’s arrival, they tactfully retreated to the kitchen to oversee Celeste, who was arranging refreshments on platters; thereby ensuring that Guy’s presence would not immediately irritate Margery.

  Now I went boldly up to Jeremy’s grandmother, and said with my best smile, “Margery, please come with me, we’d love to show you around.”

  “Attagirl,” I heard Erik mutter under his breath.

  I let Honorine conduct the tour, and she was well-prepared, giving Margery a brief history of the place, explaining that it was built in the 1920s. We began by inviting everyone into the dining room, where Rollo’s champagne glasses were all laid out, along with Aunt Sheila’s good china and silverware, and my mother’s antique linen tablecloth and napkins, which she’d shipped over to me, and some fantastic gold candlesticks courtesy of Erik. Since Jeremy and I had only just begun to carefully furnish the villa with a few choice pieces of furniture, Erik had borrowed whatever antiques he could from his European friends who “owed” him. They harmonized very well, providing extra seating for our wedding guests.

  Hono
rine explained that, after the wedding ceremony, the food would be laid out in a buffet in the dining salon, and tables would be set up, both inside here, and out on the lawn in tents. Margery followed silently, revealing nothing. Hilary had opened a little notepad on which to jot his thoughts as we moved across the room, compiling suggestions, which actually weren’t bad.

  “I know of a marvellous gilt-framed mirror that would work in here quite nicely,” he said, glancing at Margery as if they’d discussed this previously. “Possibly a wedding gift?”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “we talked about that, and I can see that it will help here.”

  So. She had spoken, at last. Was this a good sign? Or, was her comment Insult #1? At least they were discussing practical matters, which would seem to indicate that they were seriously considering going along with it. Jeremy squeezed my hand encouragingly. But when a severe, queenly look returned to Margery’s face, I began to imagine the possibility of her going through all Hilary’s pleasant suggestions, only to turn round and say, in the end, “Alas, no.”

  Honorine was now leading them upstairs, to show them the guest rooms where they would sleep tonight. “It’s smaller than I expected,” Margery said to Giles, glancing around the bedrooms as we moved through them. (Insult #2.) “What if our guests want to stay in France overnight?” she asked.

  But Jeremy was ready for this issue. “We’ve made an arrangement with a terrific boutique hotel nearby, for any guests who want to stay. The hotel’s chefs and kitchen are preparing the wedding feast, which Penny’s father will supervise. He is a superb, professional chef.”

  Margery pursed her lips and looked at Hilary, who made a few more notes. Just go ahead, I dare you, I found myself thinking, feeling suddenly pugnacious.

  “As we have arranged for transportation from the train station, parking should not be a problem,” Honorine volunteered as we all went back downstairs.